Finding Your Happy Place

It’s so important in a time of crisis to find a space that inspires you and helps you feel inspired, but also safe. Those of us who don’t own cars need to find our happy place within walking distance from home. I love going on walks in nature, but often rely on the bus to get me out to where I want to go. The quarantine has made me find places close to home that fill me with delight and help me to get away from all the worry and grief. I’ve written about searching for signs of spring and how the red flowering currant is a particular sensory delight. I’ve mapped out the currant bushes in my neighbourhood and challenge myself to make a circuit of them on a daily basis to get some exercise and keep my spirits up.

I’ve also started doing some of the yoga and basic training exercises missing from my schedule. I chose a place with benches where I can see a blooming currant bush and watch the hummingbirds flit to it while I do push-ups and squats. The bush functions as my personal coach, silently glowing in the sunlight and shifting in the breeze as I find the joy in moving my body and testing my flexibility and strength. The hummingbirds are bold enough not to bother with me as I do my repetitions. I notice tiny weeds blooming and other little details as I move through the space over and over again. 

 

What about you? Have you been walking around your neighbourhood or even your back yard to look for signs of spring? Do you like to have a destination or do you just choose a general direction and wander? I like to do a bit of both. I usually choose some bee habitat hot spots to head towards. This week I’ve found two bee rich destinations: a huge white icicle currant at the top of Queen Elizabeth Park and the pussywillows at the duck pond in the same park.

I've been watching the television series called The Durrells, which is based on the autobiographical books by naturalist Gerald Durrell. There's a lovely episode where twelve year old Gerald sits next to a wall which he observes for hours, making notes about the bugs, spiders and lizards he observes. On Sunday I sat on a wall and watched the insects and hummingbirds in the white icicle currant. It was a joy to feel the warm sun on my back as I documented the bees and flies with my camera.  I got into "the zone" and forgot about anything else other than what was in front of me, losing myself in the sensory experience. It was sublime.

This is a "bee fly". See the large eyes that meet in the centre and the stubby antennae? There are also only two wings, which makes this a wannabee--a fly that is mimicking a bee. it's obviously enjoying the nectar of the Ribes sanguineum.

If you can find some pussywillows nearby I encourage you to go out and observe them on a sunny day. The bushes were just humming with bees, mostly honeybees, but some bumblebee queens and small solitary bees. The honeybees are powdered with the copious amounts of powdery yellow pollen. They mix the powder with bee spit and pack it onto the corbiculae or baskets on their hind legs. The tiny ground-nesting bees that forage in these willows are just emerging. I couldn’t get close enough to identify them. I love the way the big bumblebee queens straddle the catkins as they slurp up the nectar. Once they’d established a nest they’ll also be collecting pollen the way the honeybees do.

There were also wasps and flies in the willow. They are thirsty for the nectar and so some pollinating, but they don't have the copious amount of branched hairs or setae that gives bees the pollen-collecting advantage.

Tachinid flies are a bit tricky because they do have a head more similar to the almond shaped bee face. But if you take a closer look, you'll see the stubby antennae and lack of four wings. You can see on the thorax that this fly is carrying some pollen grains from catkin to catkin.

Once you've found a series of "hot spots" or happy places, you can take photos or just immerse yourself in the environment, going through your five senses to explore the space. (Maybe skipping the sense of taste, unless you really know your plants. And please don't eat any bees!) Create a series of experiences that become memories to hold onto when you wake in the middle of the night with a sense of uncertainty or fear. Hold on to the healing power of nature. Bee well.